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Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
Michael Kirkbride's concept art was top notch and resulted in excellent aesthetics in the finished game:

453px-MW-concept-17.jpg
527px-MW-concept-Vivec_palace.jpg
471px-MW-concept-Akulakhan.png

768px-MW-concept-ashlands.png
800px-MW-concept-Ashlanders_hunting_netch.jpg

There's more than a hint of Moebius, Bilal, Druillet, etc. there - the guy was obviously a Métal Hurlant fan :)
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
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When Morrowind was first announced, I was expecting to get Daggerfall, albeit on a restricted subcontinent, with much better graphics.

What I got was much better graphics, but a largely empty subcontinent. There was enough content there for me to want to complete the game, but it just always felt rushed and incomplete.

This has been Bethesda's curse ever since then: they can never strike a balance between this game looks good and this game is really engaging.
 

Harthwain

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What I got was much better graphics, but a largely empty subcontinent. There was enough content there for me to want to complete the game, but it just always felt rushed and incomplete.
I am not surprised - when doing a giant map manually it is harder to fill it with hand-crafted content. That said, the amount of "empty" space made sense in the context of how big the world was. Gothic was the opposite: it had a much more compact world, so it didn't feel like there was any wasted space.
 

King Crispy

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I won't disagree in terms of "out in the woods"; Morrowind/Vvardenfell, considering its hostile environment, shouldn't be teeming with people. But in the major cities?
 

Harthwain

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I won't disagree in terms of "out in the woods"; Morrowind/Vvardenfell, considering its hostile environment, shouldn't be teeming with people. But in the major cities?
Indeed, Morrowind didn't have bustling cities in terms of crowds. I think the major reason why cities didn't feel that empty to me (although I can totally see why some people could consider them deserted) was becase buildings had people in them (traders, quest NPCs, etc.) so the "populated" locations didn't feel as empty on the inside as they did on the outside.

The only major city I can think of that feels empty in Morrowind is Vivec.
To be honest I never thought of Vivec as a city. More like a bunch of towers that were annoying to navigate.
 

Lemming42

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The problem with Morrrowind's "emptiness" I think is that comparatively few of the people you see actually do anything or have anything to say. People rightly rag on Oblivion for having a billion named NPCs who all have one line of stupid "I am Cockius Suckius, I run the store here. Feeling hungry? They say some "food" will fix that right up" dialogue or whatever other inane shit, but Morrowind's NPC roster in big towns isn't much better.

Combined with the usual issue of NPCs being static and mostly just standing totally still 24/7 or walking aimlessly in a small area, and the world just feels hollow and generally off.

Bethesda keep replicating the same problem in a lot of their games, there's technically a lot of stuff on the screen but when you try to interact with it you find out that the NPCs have no real stories or quests to partake in, the city is an illusion, you're the only person in the world who ever does anything, etc.
 

Cross

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The problem with Morrrowind's "emptiness" I think is that comparatively few of the people you see actually do anything or have anything to say. People rightly rag on Oblivion for having a billion named NPCs who all have one line of stupid "I am Cockius Suckius, I run the store here. Feeling hungry? They say some "food" will fix that right up" dialogue or whatever other inane shit, but Morrowind's NPC roster in big towns isn't much better.

Combined with the usual issue of NPCs being static and mostly just standing totally still 24/7 or walking aimlessly in a small area, and the world just feels hollow and generally off.

Bethesda keep replicating the same problem in a lot of their games, there's technically a lot of stuff on the screen but when you try to interact with it you find out that the NPCs have no real stories or quests to partake in, the city is an illusion, you're the only person in the world who ever does anything, etc.
NPC interaction in Morrowind would've been more interesting if it had used a text parser, which would've rewarded the player for deducing relevant keywords to type in. Being presented with all the keywords to click through is a poor middle ground between the flexibility of a text parser and handcrafted dialogue choices.
 
Joined
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Daggerfall was still their most "magical" game for me. Although that might be due to novelty and the era of PC gaming at that time.
daggerfall deserved today's computing power. today's games wouldn't be worth of daggerfall's time computing power.

I wonder how space Mudcrabs will look.
yes, i'm fun at parties.
apparently, the "crab" has existed throughout the several extinction waves earth suffered, in the form of having different creatures evolving back into it. it looks like the crab is a "perfect form". so space mudcrabs would look like exactly like mudcrabs.

edit: i'm not making stuff up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
 
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ADL

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I hope they spend time talking about the new Creation Kit during the showcase because that's what I'm really concerned about. Are they going to give modders the tools to design procgen content? Otherwise they're better off picking one planet and modding it to hell.
 

Spectacle

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I hope they spend time talking about the new Creation Kit during the showcase because that's what I'm really concerned about. Are they going to give modders the tools to design procgen content? Otherwise they're better off picking one planet and modding it to hell.
If not I'm sure some crazy modders will start making their own planet generator, but it might be 6 years before it's ready. Just in time for Bethesda to release the Starfield: Galactic Edition.
 

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